Sunday, August 30, 2009

The Present

If I went back in time to the 50's and were to be asked "Are there flying cars in the future?"

I'd reply "No, we still can't seem to keep cars from crashing on the ground, so letting teenagers, alcoholics and the elderly take to the sky, is probably never going to be in the cards. But, in the future, the smartest scientific mind on earth... talks using a robot computer voice."


Thinking about baseball

My mom was telling me there was a small handful of shirts which she really liked at the store, but once she got them home, she decided she didn't like them.

So she decided to show them to my girlfriend, adding "Because... we're about the same size."

No!

NO!

God Damn it!

Baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, base-ball, BassBowl, Base Ball, Baseball, Baseball, Baseball, BASEBALL!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Homefront Drama



Four or Five years ago, my mom let my teenage sister's boyfriend move in.




When he showed up to our house with a fat lip, the story was that his dad tried to beat the gay out of him.
Having a teenage romance under the roof isn't very conducive to -you know- the whole parenting thing, but my mom figured that by letting this soft spoken kid move in,




he might turn his grades around.

The kitchen gets messy, mom keeps re-stating the rules about sharing blankets, and the kid's dad pawns his electric guitar.



Then, not long into his stay, he goes camping with some girl who my sister hates,


and they end up making-out or whatever it is that teenagers do to cheat on each other.
See, my sister was so adamant to have this kid move in, that she spent long, long hours grinding the folks down to convince them it was best for this kid. She slowly won mom over until finally the step dad had no say.

The problem was, to get my mom to let the kid move in, my sister had to hustle this line about how it has nothing to do with her wanting her boyfriend to live at the house, it's that this kid has no safe place to stay.

So when my sister decided she wanted the kid kicked out for cheating on her, my mom was all like "But he has no safe place to stay."
HA!


For months, my sister bounced between getting back together with him, and ratting him out like some jealous step-sister.



I noticed that I was losing shit all the time - cigarettes and cash; here, a hollowed out book; there - until christmas rolled around and we realized this kid was a fucking thief. He stole our fucking christmas money.
And mom wanted to give the kid a super-family christmas, so she bought the kid an electric guitar. (His family wouldn't let him come over on holidays because he allegedly stole $1200 from his grandma)


My mom, not wanting to shatter the image of a perfect christmas, infuriated my other sister by turning a blind eye. There was further outrage after Mom affirmed that we had violated this kid's civil rights by searching his belongings and seizing this impressively, massive bag of grass which coincidentally weighed-out to a dollar amount somewhat similar to that of the stolen fucking christmas money.
So after my other sister paraded around the chirstmas tree with a huge bag of weed, mom created a penalty best described as a mild inquisition. He admitted to owning the bag of weed that was in his backpack and cost as much as the stolen christmas money, but he denied steeling the christmas money.
Case closed.
(Kid gets his weed back)
My other sister punches my sister in the face.

It was an epic christmas.





And this is what that fucking kid got me from the dollar store.





This kid's ascent into his twenties was fit for a thief. The type of thief who would get busted trying to steal the TV from the cabana of his dad's apartment complex.



Luckily, when you're white, you might be able to trick a judge into believing that you are more parts Junkie than parts thief and then Poof! The hardships of being raped in prison are suddenly turned into the mere inconvenience of getting your girlfriend to piss into condoms so you can pass your bi-weekly drug tests.
Seemingly out of the fucking blue, my sister started visiting this kid while he was in county. Completely omitting from her past the stolen christmas money, a $300 burn from her stolen debit card, a screen shot of a forged $5K check which the kid had to delete from his myspace comments, chuckles over seeing him holding a cardboard sign on a downtown street corner, rumors of some really down low shit he did to get heroin, (etc. etc.) she goes out and signs a one bedroom lease that's twice her monthly income and she lets the kid move in.
So now I'm sifting through his myspace pics, and -oh look - here's one of his skid row cronies who just might be strong enough to carry my Flat Screen to the bus stop.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Health Care

60% of all bankruptcies were caused by medical bills.
40% were not.

Of the chunk of Bankruptcies caused by medical bills, 75% of those people HAD MEDICAL COVERAGE!

(75% of 60 is 45)

That means that 45% of all bankruptcies were caused by medical bills that insurance wouldn't pay for.

So the leading cause of bankruptcy is health insurance carriers fucking people over.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

It Takes A Village

My last visit to Disney land was close to ruined by all the crying children. How the fuck does a child come to cry in Disney land?

Always curious about the result of mixing cookies with spankings (would it make one love spankings, or hate cookies?) I've come to find that mixing Disney land with crying children has made me Revel in a child's discontent.

What's more, I love telling kids to "Cut it out," in public.

About a year ago, this woman and her kid sort of cut in front of me and the girlfriend, at a papa murphy's. She did the old While-this-couple-is-deciding-I'll-just-read-the-menu-where-you're-supposed-to-order thing.

So while I was glaring at the back of the bitches head, her kid starts zipping around and decides to get all autonomous at the soda cooler.



One after another, the kid starts budging the caps on the bottles, and I can hear each one hiss from all the way across the store.

"Hey Ivan," I grumble, repeating what I heard his mom call him. "Cut it out," I say in a tone to make it stick.

His mom turned back to smile and chuckle at me the way one does when encountering a loquacious, aging meth-addict.

"He's breaking the seal on the bottles," I inform her.

She looked like this



Only more skeptical. And she squeals "He's thrEEEee!" in the whiny tone which a mom who looks like that would use. "Some ADULTS aren't even strong enough to open those!" she challenged.

"Well," I walked to the cooler, "He opened this one, this one, and this one..." I told her as I squeezed each bottle, "But he didn't open this one." The last, one keeping it's firm composure the way a bottle for sale should.

The kid clutched his mother's leg while she and I stared at each other. Then she turned to the counter and ordered the three bottles her kid picked to fuck up.

I came in my pants. And then I left like some super-hero recess-teacher with an endless pad of D-slips.



Weeks ago I was at Costco doing the whole Put-half-my-food-in-front-of-my-sister-because-$10-does-so-much-damage-in-the-cafe-that-if-all-the-food-I-was-planning-to-eat-was-in-front-of-me-I'd-look-like-one-of-those-fat-microsoft-guys-in-a-wolf-pack-shirt thing.

Seven dollars down, I slide "My sister's food" to my side of the table,



and my sister goes "That kid is wasting onions."

I look across the cafe and see some kid cranking away on the onion machine



watching the business-end shit out onions.


"Hey Kid!" I belt out with a mouth full of polish. "Cut it out."

Every Asian in the place stared at me... but the kid stopped and looked around.

Then the kid started up again - so of course - "HEY KID! Cut It OUT!"

It just so happens that Mother-of-the-year was standing right beside me with her cart. She called him over and made me come in my pants.

"You're not getting any ice cream!"
"No!" he cried. And in his upright tantrum comes bouncing out his mouth "But I really Want it!"

I smiled because my food suddenly tasted better.



Anyhow, this barefoot little shit makes me feel like a dog that's been told not to bark at the TV.




And this one makes me gleeful because I hate shitty parents and their prodigies.